


The Artificial Bovine Abduction

by DesertScribe



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-10 02:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: Ida has a job for Wendy ...and Lacey?





	The Artificial Bovine Abduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinealightonme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/gifts).



"I'm clocking out," Wendy Watson announced to Middleman HQ (AKA, the Jolly Fats Wehawkin Temp Agency) in general as she grabbed her bag out of her locker. "Have a good night," she called to her boss, who had already settled in at his desk with a glass of milk and what looked to be an old-timey Western pulp novel.

"You too, Dubbie." The Middleman gave her a smile and nod of acknowledgment and then went back to reading.

Wendy really hoped that whatever novel he was reading was not the book equivalent of Ride Lonesome, the movie which he seemed cursed to never be able to watch through to the end without getting interrupted by supernatural shenanigans, because she did not need that kind of trouble tonight. She loved her job, because her job was amazing, but even superheroes in training needed downtime to kick back and hang out with their civilian friends.

"Not so fast, junkie," Ida snapped at Wendy, halting her dash for the door. "There's still one more thing you need to do tonight."

"No, there isn't," Wendy said. Since this was Ida she was talking to, she didn't even try to resist the urge to roll her eyes. "If there had been any kind of new emergency, I'd have heard the alarm, because it's not like that thing is subtle. If this about me smashing another Interro-droid, I already picked up all the pieces, sorted the recyclable parts from the trash, _and_ vacuumed up the micro-fragments, even though that part of cleanup is supposed to be your job, and we both know it." Wendy didn't bother trying to correct Ida assumptions on which recreational substances she did or didn't make use of. She had long ago learned that that argument was an exercise in futility on her part.

"You're zero for two on wild guesses you've pulled out of your back-talking backside," Ida said. "I'd ask if you wanted to make it zero for three, but I don't need you wasting any more of my time than you already have."

"You're wasting your own time," Wendy said. "Whatever you want can wait until tomorrow. Tonight, I'm helping Lacey polish her latest piece of confrontational spoken word performance art about the evils of factory farming." Wendy wasn't about to give up eating hamburgers anytime soon, but she fully believed that the methods used raise the cows to make those hamburgers could stand to be a whole lot more humane, so she figured there wasn't any conflict of interest or hypocrisy in her helping Lacey with this protest.

"Yeah, I know, because you haven't shut your yap about it all day, as if any of us are paid to care about the details of you and your junkie friend wasting your time by dressing up in cow costumes," Ida said.

"We're not just dressing up as cows, we're dressing up as zombie cows."

"There you go again, thinking I care," Ida said. "Anyway, that's exactly why you're the one getting this assignment."

"And what if I don't want the assignment?"

Ida shrugged. "What's not to want? It'll be the easiest assignment you've had since we hired you. You two can go do exactly what you were going to do anyway, but if you do your toking up at this particular location," at which point Wendy's communicator watch pinged and displayed an address, "then you can earn a whole night's worth of overtime pay without any other extra effort on your part."

"I'm not putting Lacey in danger just for a job."

"Statistically, the danger from this job won't be any higher than the average human faces in their normal daily lives. Do you also try to stop your buddy from doing things like using scissors or crossing the street?"

"Ugh, fine," Wendy capitulated. The job of Middleman-in-training already paid pretty well, but it was difficult to turn down so much allegedly easy extra cash. Good paints weren't cheap, and lately Wendy's artwork had been leaning toward larger than average canvas sizes. "What kind of weapons am I going to need?"

"No weapons required for this one," Ida said. "You two just be your usual junkie selves, and the rest will work itself out from there."

"If you say so," Wendy said, already planning which weapons she was going to bring with her.

* * *

"This is actually a pretty nice place to practice," Lacey said, looking around the field that Ida had sent them to. Her voice came out only slightly muffled by the surprisingly detailed cow mask she had assembled using not much more than acrylic faux-fur, old wire coat hangers, and hot glue.

"Maybe a little too nice," Wendy said, also looking around, though in her case it was a matter of scanning the area for threats instead of taking in its bucolic charms. The artist part of her mind could appreciate the beauty of the rolling hills as the late afternoon edged into the so-called 'golden hour' before sunset. The 'future-Middleman who was already fighting evil so other people wouldn't have to' part of her brain knew that Ida wouldn't have sent them out there without a greater reason than being annoying and wished that the mesh eye holes in the cow masks provided a wider field of view. "I don't trust it."

"It'll help me get into character," Lacey said. She did a few quick jumping jacks to limber up and then struck a dramatic pose. "Moo," she proclaimed. "Mooooo! I am a cow, and I should be wandering wild grasslands with my herd, nibbling sweet clover and other tasty green plants until I'm a ripe old age. I should not be packed into a bare dirt feedlot to be fattened with corn for slaughter!"

There was something about the way Lacey said the word 'slaughter' that reminded Wendy of something she had seen amid the clutter of paperwork at the office a few days back. It had been a thick folder filled with everything from Argentinian newspaper clippings to pictures printed from Hipstergram, all focusing on messily dead cows. Wendy hadn't paid much attention to it at the time due to finding it in the 'whenever you feel like getting around to it' pile instead of the 'important' pile or the 'world-endingly urgent' pile. Now it felt like it had suddenly become important.

"Uh, Lacey," Wendy said as she started scanning the skies for danger instead of their immediate surroundings, "I think I've figured out why my boss's cranky android wanted us out here tonight. Reports of cattle mutilations are on the rise all over the world, and she knew we were going to be dressing up like cows."

"And if you've been sent to deal with the problem, then I'm guessing it's not sadistic teenagers with too much free time on their hands or coyotes like the paranormal debunking shows claim," Lacey said. Wendy couldn't see her face through the cow mask, but she could hear the frown in her voice, and the mask was also frowning anyway.

"More like sadistic teenage aliens who look like bipedal pink coyotes."

Lacey gripped her 'Factory Farming Is Torture" sign more tightly and growled, "Well, if we meet them, I'm going to tell them what jerks they're being. They're even worse than the people I was originally going to protest."

"Looks like you might get your chance sooner than you think," Wendy sighed as a brightly lit anvil-shaped UFO chose that moment to appear in the sky and beam them both aboard.

"Hey," Lacey said to their alien captors once the disorientation of having her molecules disassembled and then reassembled elsewhere had passed, "are you the guys who keep mutilating cattle all over the world?"

"Ooh, this one talks, and, yes, we are," one of the aliens replied. The other aliens giggled and nodded in agreement. They looked a lot more Muppet-y in real life than they had in the O2STK-provided dossier photos Wendy had seen in the file.

"That's what I thought," Lacey said. "You need to stop hurting innocent cows!"

"You're not our mom," another of the aliens said, "and mutilating cattle is fun! Maybe we'll mutilate you and your other cow friend even more than usual, just because we can, and there's nothing you can do to stop us!"

"Oh yeah? Watch me," Lacey snarled and then threw herself at the furry pink aliens with Wendy only a step behind her.

Wendy hadn't seen Lacey kick so much ass since the last time that a frat house had made the mistake of attempting a panty raid on the two of them in their senior year of art school. It was glorious. Sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword. Sometimes the extra wide tip paint marker on a sign used as part of a piece of confrontational spoken-word performance art is mightier than the pen. And sometimes the wooden two-by-four handle of said sign can be mightier than swords, pens, and paint markers combined when used to bludgeon a bunch of obnoxious alien teenagers around their furry pink heads and shoulders.

Wendy got in her share of good hits too, and before too long they were sharing a triumphant hug back in the field where they'd started, having sent the cattle-mutilating aliens running back to their home planet with their tails between their legs, literally.

* * *

The next day, Wendy Watson walked into Middleman HQ with a cup of coffee in her hand, a spring in her step, and a smile on her face.

"Looks like somebody had fun getting rid of a persistent extraterrestrial nuisance with her junkie friend last night," Ida commented boredly from her place near the HEYDAR.

"You know, I really did," Wendy said cheerily, unwilling to let the android ruin the good mood which always lingered in the afterglow of beating up evil jerks of any species. "But, I have to ask, Ida. How did you know that those aliens would bring out Lacey's righteous vegan wrath enough to make her kick pink coyote Muppet ass? I didn't even need to use any of the weapons I brought with me."

"Ass kicking? Hensonians as a species are deathly allergic to THC," Ida said. "They were supposed to all drop dead at the first whiff of secondhand Mary Jane smoke on your breath as soon as you were aboard their ship. Results are what matter, though," she added with a shrug, "so whatever."

Before Wendy could formulate a suitably scathing reply, the HEYDAR made an unpleasant honking noise and spit out a piece of paper.

"I hope you aren't planning to spend all day resting on your laurels and congratulating yourself on a job well done, because there's real work that needs doing," Ida said as she tore the paper out of the printer slot and shoved it into Wendy's hands without bothering to read it herself first. The information had probably been uploaded directly into her brain before the ink hit the page. "Something's riling up the dragons living under Yellowstone, and if it gets any worse, the park rangers won't be able to pass off all the gnawed-on tourists as bear attacks. Also, the supervolcano might explode, so hop to it."

Wendy accepted the paper without complaint and chugged her coffee as she went to find the Middleman to share the news of their latest assignment. It was just another day at the office.

**The End**


End file.
